“Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died”
“Lord, if you had been here, 127,000 of our brothers & sisters would not have died”
..my conclusion to last weekend’s homily, linking salvation history 2021yrs ago to the pandemic last week; if there is no weave between the two, the story you have just heard is merely the first Good Friday.. the story & person dead & buried.. your being here as if you came to fulfil a Sunday obligation in the line of duty, it is all rather pointless.. dead buried & boring.. you are worth much much more than that.. Jesus died for you; he inspired some key characters in the passion narrative, whilst tragically others, who should have known better for all their religious & cultural pedigree, let him & themselves down badly.. maybe someone you know very well?.. as I read & prayed this account by St Mark a week last Saturday, wondering what word would emerge for me, & through me for you, for this weekend, & the word was “yield”.. in Ireland at road junctions, instead of a “give-way” sign it reads “yield”.. abbreviation for “give preference to other traffic”.. in terms of our Christianity, “yield” is service.. to give other people & their needs preference, such as vaccine charity.. it combats vaccine nationalism, & the UK’s arrogance in sniffily looking down on EU, so far behind us in their vaccination programmes; but would we urge our govt to “yield” 25% of our bought paid for & guaranteed doses to go to vaccine poor countries in Africa or South America.. delaying vaccine for some of you by few months? ..yield self-sacrifice.. “Lord, not if, but because you are here, in the person of those 6m disciples of yours in UK, who yielded their own opportunity to be vaccinated, 6m of our poorest brothers & sisters have not died”..& pray where are you, who are you, in the passion narrative you have just heard?.. yielding rich fruit or sour grapes?.. Holy Week the week of all weeks for the truth.. the truth which will set you free from the spiritual covid you have long been a victim of.. spiritual long-covid.. infecting others, your loved ones, for years.. “not I, Lord surely?” in Marks gospel, there is no servant girl giving Peter the third degree.. no symptoms of your spiritual covid until it’s too late, & now perhaps you would approach your spiritual doctor for a phone consultation & diagnosis?.. but you tell yourself “it is too late” it’s terminal.. without realising the victim of all victims of spiritual covid, Judas, was loved, forgiven & redeemed.. sadly, tragically, so often, too often, he & us too familiar with tragic episodes of ordinary life, schooled driven into us by Good Friday priests or religious sisters, themselves victims of spiritual long-covid, who in seminary or convent had never been introduced to the fullness of the real Judas, our role model extraordinaire, the prodigal son no less, & we were never made aware of his epilogue, where he yielded thirty pieces of silver in guilt & remorse, & received instead a priceless seat in the kingdom..& the unnamed woman who poured ointment over Jesus? yielded generously in ointment tears & self-disclosure of her dissolute tragic episodes, & her Lord yielded the ultimate spiritual character reference we have only been led to dream of rather than believe in.. “wherever throughout all the world the Good News is proclaimed, what she has done will be told also, in remembrance of her” “go sell yield all you own, then come follow me” follow me into Holy Week “but he/we went away sad for he/we are people of great wealth” a wealth/yield we have worked hard for, carefully counted stored, in large barns & compromised consciences, & we are not for giving it away to the riff-raff Jesus seems to attract & yield to.. like Hamish or Joel.. in 12 months of lockdown not one of you have asked after them.. “you will all lose faith”.. “even if all lose faith, I will not”..& how often do I hear cock crow in field opposite Surgery?.. at least I hear it..& our ultimate hope & consolation in our long spiritual covid is Our Lords own moments of yield.. poor self-filled & richly self-sacrificial.. “a man like us in all things but sin” I would want to yield up, omit the “but sin”; Jesus had dis-graceful episodes in his life which seasoned his own journey into the fullness of humanity.. as, in contrast, our own graceful episodes in life season yeast our own journey into the fullness of divinity.. ”Father, everything is possible for you.. take this cup of suffering from me” & after a long period of despair grief fear & self-betrayal in his Gethsemane, he was able to say gracefully “but let it be as you, not I, would have it” ..Pilate a good man tragically yielded truth to mob rule.. chief priests out of jealousy yielded him “crucify him”..& on the Cross his last words & his last breath were real ones of human desolation & self-surrender “my God, my God, why have you deserted me?” & in Luke’s account, the ultimate words of yield at his moment of death.. “Father into your hands I commit my spirit”..& the first conversion from the spiritual vaccine we call grace, 30 secs after his death, in person of the Centurion, who “had seen how he had died & he said “in truth this man was a son of God”..
my prayer for each of you this Holy Week.. that you find yourself, your real self, on a journey.. at the end of a spiritual long-covid journey, yielding all those dis-graceful episodes in your line of duty thus far, & instead, voicing the divine words, the divine vaccine, which protects you for eternal life.. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”.. the yield of a lifetime..
                                                                                                                                                                                 [Palm Sunday Yr B ; Mk 14;1-15;47]